Positioning error compensation for parallel mechanism with two kinematic calibration methods

Compared with serial mechanisms, the parallel mechanism (PM) theoretically exhibited higher positioning accuracy, dynamic performance, strength-to-weight ratio, and lower manufacturing cost, but they had not been widely used in the practical application. One key issue, positioning accuracy, which directly affected their performance and was greatly influenced by the errors of kinematic structure parameters was analyzed. To effectively enhance the positioning precision of PMs, a novel modeless kinematic calibration method, namely the split calibration, was presented and its compensation effect of the positioning error was comprehensively compared with that of an integrated method on two different types of PMs. A strange phenomenon-correct and incorrect identified results were derived from two different PMs by the same integrated method, respectively-which had not been reported yet was discovered, and the origin of it was revealed utilizing numerical simulations. Finally, respective merits and drawbacks of these two methods obtained in this paper provided underlying insights to guide the practical application of the kinematic calibration for PMs.